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ARCHITECTURE: 100.00%

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Architecture of the Etruscans and Romans. In architecture, as well as sculpture, the Romans were long under the influence of the Etruscans, who, though denied the gift of rising to the ideal, united wonderful activity and inventiveness with a passion for covering their buildings with rich ornamental carving. None of their temples have survived, for they built all the upper parts of wood; but many proofs of their activity in building remain, surviving from various ages, in the shape of Tombs and Walls. The latter clearly show how they progressed from piling up polygonal blocks in Cyclopean style to regular courses of squared stone. Here and there a building still shows that the Etruscans originally made vaultings by letting horizontal courses jut over, as in the ancient Greek thesauroi above mentioned; on the other hand, some very old gateways, as at Volterra (fig. 7) and Perugia, exhibit the true Arch of wedge-shaped stones, the invention of which is probably due to Etruscan ingenuity, and from the introduction of which a new and magnificent development of architecture takes its rise. The most imposing monument of ancient Italian arch-building is to be seen in the sewers of Rome laid down in the 6th century B.C. (See CLOACA MAXIMA.) When all other traces of Etruscan influence were being swept away at Rome by the intrusion of Greek forms of art, especially after the Conquest of Greece in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., the Roman architects kept alive in full vigour the Etruscan method of building the arch, which they developed and completed by the inventions of the Cross-Arch (or groined vault) and the Dome. With the Arch, which admits of a bolder and more varied management of spaces, the Romans combined, as a decorative element, the columns of the Greek Orders. Among these their growing love of pomp gave the preference more and more to the Corinthian, adding to it afterwards a still more gorgeous embellishment in what is called the Roman or Composite capital (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF). Another service rendered by the Romans was the introduction of building in brick (see POTTERY). A more vigorous advance in Roman architecture dates from the opening of the 3rd century B.C., when they began making great military roads and aqueducts. In the first half of the 2nd century they built, on Greek models, the first Basilica, which, besides its practical utility served to embellish the Forum. Soon after the middle of the century, appeared the first of their more ambitious temples in the Greek style. There is simple grandeur in the ruins of the Tabularium, or Record-Office, built B.C. 78 on the slope of the Capitol next the Forum. These are among the few remains of Roman republican architecture; but in the last decades of the Republic simplicity gradually disappeared, and men were eager to display a princely pomp in public and private buildings; witness the first stone theatre erected by Pompey as early as 55 B.C. Then all that went before was eclipsed by the vast works undertaken by Caesar, the Theatre, Amphitheatre, Circus, Basilica Iulia, Forum Caesaris with its Temple to Venus Genetrix. These were finished by Augustus, under whom Roman architecture seems to have reached its culminating point. Augustus, aided bu his son-in-law Agrippa, a man who understood building, not only completed his uncle's plans, but added many magnificent structures--the Forum Augusti with its Temple to Mars Ultor, the Theatre of Marcellus with its Portico of Octavia, the Mansoleum, and others. Augustus could fairly boast that" having found Rome a city of brick, he left it a city of marble." The grandest monument of that age, and one of the loftiest creations of Roman art in general, is the Pantheon (q.v.) built by Agrippa, adjacent to, but not connected with, his Thermae, the first of the many works of that kind in Rome. A still more splendid aspect was imparted to the city by the rebuilding of the Old Town burnt down in Nero's fire, and by the "Golden House" of Nero, a gorgeous pile, the like of which was never seen before, but which was destroyed on the violent death of its creator. Of the luxurious grandeur of private buildings we have ocular proof in the dwelling-houses of Pompeii, a paltry country-town in comparison with Rome. The progress made under the Flavian emperors is evidenced by Vespasian's Amphitheatre (q.v.) known as the Colosseum (figs. 8, 9, 10), the mightiest Roman ruin in the world, by the ruined Thermae, or Baths, of Titus, and by his Triumphal Arch (q.v.), the oldest specimen extant in Rome of this class of monument, itself a creation of the Roman mind (fig. 11). But all previous buildings were surpassed in size and splendour when Trajan's architect Apollodorus of Damascus raised the Forum Traianum with its huge Basilica Ulpia (fig. 12) and the still surviving Column of Trajan. No less extensive were the works of Hadrian, who, besides adorning Athens with many magnificent buildings, bequeathed to Rome a Temple of Venus and Roma, the most colossal of all Roman temples (fig. 13) and his own Mausoleum (q.v.), the core of which is preserved in the Castle of St. Angelo. While the works of the Antonines already show a gradual decline in architectural feeling, the Triumphal Arch of Severus ushers in the period of decay that set in with the 3rd century. In this closing period of Roman rule the buildings grow more and more gigantic, witness the Baths of Caracalla (fig. 14), those of Diocletian, with his palace at Salona (three miles from Spalatro) in Dalmatia, and the Basilica of Constantine breathing the last feeble gasp of ancient life. But outside of Rome and Italy, in every part of the enormous empire to its utmost barbarian borders, bridges, numberless remains of roads and aqueducts and viaducts, ramparts and gateways, palaces, villas, market-places and judgment-halls, baths, theatres, amphitheatres and temples, attest the versatility, majesty, and solidity of Roman architecture, most of whose creations only the rudest shocks have hitherto been able to destroy.
 
ART 80.73%

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See ARCHITECTURE, ARCHITECTURE (ORDERS OF), PAINTING, and SCULPTURE; and comp. COINAGE and GEMS.
 
ARCHITECTURE: 80.73%

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of the Greeks. Of the earliest efforts of the Greeks in architecture, we have evidence in the so-called Cyclopean Walls surrounding the castles of kings in the Heroic Age at Tiryns, Argos, Mycenae (fig. 1), and elsewhere. They are of enormous thickness, some being constructed of rude colossal blocks, whose gaps are filled up with smaller stones; while others are built of stones more or less carefully hewn, their interstices exactly fitting into each other. Gradually they begin to show an approximation to buildings with rectangular blocks. The gates let into these walls are closed at the top either by the courses of stone jutting over from each side till they touch, or by a long straight block laid over the two leaning side-posts. Of the latter kind is the famous Lion-gate at Mycenae, so-called from the group of two lions standing with their forefeet on the broad pedestal of a pillar that tapers rapidly downwards, and remarkable as the oldest specimen of Greek sculpture. The sculpture is carved on a large triangular slab that fills an opening left in the wall to lighten the weight on the lintel (fig. 2). Among the most striking relies of this primitive age are the so-called Thesauroi, or treasuries (now regarded as tombs) of ancient dynasties the most considerable being the Treasure-house of Atreus at Mycenae. Theusual form of these buildings is that of a circular chamber vaulted over by the horizontal courses approaching from all sides till they meet. Thus the vault is not a true arch (fig. 3). The interior seems originally to have been covered with metal plates, thus agreeing with Homer's descriptions of metal as a favourite ornament of princely houses. An open-air building preserved from that age is the supposed Temple of Hera on Mount Ocha (now Hagios Elias) in Euboea, a rectangle built of regular square blocks, with walls more than a yard thick, two small windows, and a door with leaning posts and a huge lintel in the southern side-wall. The sloping roof is of hewn flagstones resting on the thickness of the wall and overlapping each other; but the centre is left open as in the hypaethral temples of a later time. From the simple shape of a rectangular house shut in by blank walls we gradually advance to finer and richer forms, formed especially by the introduction of columns detached from the wall and serving to support the roof and ceiling. Even in Homer we find columns in the palaces to support the halls that surround the courtyard, and the ceiling of the banqueting-room. The construction of columns (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF) received its artistic development first from the Dorians after their migration into the Peloponnesus about 1000 B.C., next from the Ionians, and from each in a form suitable to their several characters. If the simple serious character of the Dorians speaks in the Doric Order, no less does the lighter, nimbler, and more showy genius of the Ionian race come out in the Order named after them. By about 650 B.C. the Ionic style was flourishing aide by side with the Doric. As it was in the construction of Temples (q.v.) that architecture had developed her favourite forms, all other public buildings borrowed their artistic character from the temple. The structure and furniture of private houses (see HOUSE), were, during the best days of Greece, kept down to the simplest forms. About 600 B.C., in the Greek islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, we come across the first architects known to us by name. It was then that Rhaecus and Theodorus of Samos, celebrated likewise as inventors of casting in bronze, built the great temple of Hera in that island, while Chersiphron of Cnosus in Crete, with his son Metagenes, began the temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world, which was not finished till 120 years after. In Greece Proper a vast temple to Zeus was begun at Athens in the 6th century B.C. (see OLYMPIEUM), and two more at Delphi and Olympia, one by the Corinthian Spintharus, the other by the Elean Libon. Here, and in the Western colonies the Doric style still predominated everywhere. Among the chief remains of this period, in addition to many ruined temples in Sicily (especially at Selinus and Agrigentum), should be mentioned the Temple of Poseidon. at Paestum (Poseidonia) in South Italy, one of the best preserved and most beautiful relies of antiquity (figs. 4, 5). The patriotic fervour of the Persian Wars created a general expansion of Greek life, in which Architecture and the sister art of Sculpture were not slow to take a part. In these departments, as in the whole onward movement, a central position was taken by Athens, whose leading statesmen, Cimon and Pericles, lavished the great resources of the State at once in strengthening and beautifying the city. During this period arose a group of masterpieces that still astonish us in their ruins, some in the forms of a softened Doric, others in the Ionic style, which had now found its way into Attica, and was here fostered into nobler shapes. The Doric order is represented by the Temple of Theseus (fig. 6), the Propylaea built by Mnesicles, the Parthenon, a joint production of Ictinus and Callicrates; while the Erechtheum is the most brilliant creation of the Ionic order in Attica. Of the influence of Attic Architecture on the rest of Greece we have proof, especially in the Temple of Apollo at Bassae in South-Western Arcadia, built from the design of the above-mentioned Ictinus. The progress of the Drama to its perfection in this period led to a corresponding improvement in the building of Theatres (q.v.). A stone theatre was begun at Athens even before the Persian Wars; and the Odeum of Pericles served similar purposes. How soon the highest results were achieved in this department, when once the fundamental forms had thus been laid down in outline at Athens, is shown by the theatre at Epidaurus, a work of Polyclitus, unsurpassed, as the ancients testify, by any later theatres in harmony and beauty. Another was built at Syracuse, before B.C. 420. Nor is it only in the erection of single buildings that the great advance then made by architecture shows itself. In laying out new towns, or parts of towns, men began to proceed on artistic principles, an innovation due to the sophist Hippodamus of Miletus. In the 4th century B.C., owing to the change wrought in the Greek mind by the Peloponnesian War, in place of the pure and even tone of the preceding period, a desire for effect became more and more general, both in architecture and sculpture. The sober Doric style fell into abeyance and gave way to the Ionic, by the side of which a new Order, the Corinthian, said to have been invented by the sculptor Callimachus, with its more gorgeous decorations, became increasingly fashionable. In the first half of the 4th century arose what the ancients considered the largest and grandest temple in the Peloponnesus, that of Athena at Tegea, a work of the sculptor and architect Scopas. During the middle of the century, another of the "seven wonders," the splendid tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus was constructed (see MAUSOLEUM). Many magnificent temples arose in that time. In Asia Minor, the temple at Ephesus, burnt down by Herostratus, was rebuilt by Alexander's bold architect Deinocrates. In the islands the ruins of the temple of Athena at Priene, of Apollo at Miletus, of Dionysus at Teos, and others, even to this day offer a brilliant testimony to their former magnificence. Among Athenian buildings of that age the Monument of Lysicrates (q.v.) is conspicuous for its graceful elegance and elaborate development of the Corinthian style. In the succeeding age Greek architecture shows its finest achievements in the building of theatres, especially those of Asiatic towns, in the gorgeous palaces of newly-built royal capitals, and in general in the luxurious completeness of private buildings. As an important specimen of the last age of Attic architecture may also be mentioned the Tower of the Winds (q.v.) at Athens.
 
ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF 80.73%

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In Greek architecture there were three orders of columns: the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. (I) Doric: Figures 1 and 2 give instances of the Doric style from the temple at Paestum and the Parthenon at Athens. The Doric column consists (a) of the shaft, which increases in diameter almost invisibly up to about one-quarter of its height, and diminishes slightly after that point. It has no base, but rests immediately on the stylobate. It is surrounded with semi-circular flutings, meeting each other at a sharp angle. These were chiselled with a cedar-wood tool after the separate drums had been put together. (b) The capital (Lat. capitulum). This consists of three parts, (a) the hypotrachelion, or neck of the column, a continuation of the shaft, but separated by an indentation from the other drums. It is wider at the top than at the bottom, and is generally ornamented with several parallel and horizontal rings. (b) The echinus, a circular moulding or cushion, which widens greatly towards the top. (c) The abax or abacus, a square slab supporting the architrave or episylion. The height of the shaft is usually 5 1/2 times, the distance between the columns 1 1/2 times the diameter of the base of the column. The architrave is a quadrangular beam of stone, reaching from pillar to pillar. On this again rests the frieze, zophoros, so called from the metopes which are adorned with sculptures in relief. These metopes are square spaces between the triglyphs: the triglyphs are surfaces out into three concave grooves, two whole grooves in the centre, and two half grooves at the sides. One is placed over each pillar, and one between each pair of pillars. The entablature is completed by a projecting cornice, a slab crowned with a simple heading-course, the lower surface of which is ornamented with sloping corbels (Gk. stagones, Lat. mutuli). (II) Ionic Columns. An instance is given in fig. 3 from the temple on the Ilissus at Athens. These are loftier than the Doric, their height being 8 1/2-9 1/2 times the diameter of the, lower part. The enlargement of the lower part is also less than in the Doric columns, the distance between each column greater (two diameters), the flutings (generally 24 in number) deeper, and separated by small flat surfaces. The Ionic column has a base consisting of a square slab (plinthos), and several cushion like supports separated by grooves. The capital, again, is more artistically developed. The neck, instead of fluting, has five leaves worked in relief. The echinus is very small and ornamented with an egg pattern. Over it, instead of the abacus, is a Four-cornered cushion ending before and behind in spiral volutes, supporting a narrow square slab, which is also adorned with an egg pattern. The architrave is divided into three bands, projecting one above the other, and upon it rises, in an uninterrupted surface, the frieze, adorned with reliefs, continuously along its whole length. Finally, the cornice is composed of different parts. (III) The Corinthian column (fig. 4, from the monument of Lysicrates, at Athens). The base and shaft are identical with the Ionic, but the capital takes the form of an open calix formed of acanthus leaves. Above this is another set of leaves, from between which grow stalks with small leaves, rounded into the form of volutes. On this rests a small abacus widening towards the top, and on this again the entablature, which is borrowed from the Ionic order. On the human figures employed instead of columns to support the entablature, see ATLAS, CANEPHORI, CARYATIDES. The Romans adopted the Greek styles of column, but not always in their pure form. They were fondest of the Corinthian, which they laboured to enrich with new and often excessive ornamentation. For instance, they crowned the Corinthian capital with the Ionic, thus forming what is called the Roman or composite capital. The style known as Tuscan is a degenerate form of the Doric. The Tuscan column has a smooth shaft, in height=7 diameters of the lower part, and tapering up to three-quarters of its lower dimensions. Its base consists of two parts, a circular plinth, and a cushion of equal height. The capital is formed of three parts of equal height. In other styles, too, the Romans sometimes adopted the smooth instead of the fluted shaft, as for instance in the Pantheon (fig. 5). Single columns were sometimes erected by the Greeks, and in imitation of them by the Romans, as memorials to distinguished persons. A good example is the Columna Rostrata, or column with its shaft adorned with the beaks of ships, in the Roman Forum. This was set up in commemoration of the naval victory of Duilius over the Carthaginians (261 B.C.). Among the columns which survive, the most magnificent is that of Trajan, erected in the Forum of Trajan 113 A.D. It rises on a quadrangular pediment to the height of 124 feet; its diameter below is about 10 feet, and a little less in the upper part. An interior spiral staircase of 185 steps leads to the summit. The shaft, formed of twenty-three drums of marble, is adorned with a series of reliefs, 3 feet 3 inches high and 200 feet long, in a series of twenty-two spirals. They represent scenes in Trajan's Dacian campaigns, and contain 2,500 human figures, with animals, engines, etc. On a cylindrical pedestal at the summit there once stood a gilded statue of the emperor, which, since the year 1587, has made way for a bronze figure of St. Peter. A similar column is that of Marcus Aurelius, 122 feet high, on the Piazza Colonna. Since 1589 the statue of St. Paul has been substituted for that of the emperor. The reliefs, in twenty spirals, represent events in the emperor's war with the Marcomanni.
 
DIPTEROS 49.76%

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An architectural epithet descriptive of a temple surrounded by a double line of columns. (See TEMPLE.)
 
VITRUVIUS POLLIO 46.71%
A military engineer who flourished in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus. In his old age Octavia, the sister of Augustus, procured him a pension. The leisure thus acquired he employed in composing a work on architecture in ten books (De Architectura), drawn from Greek sources and from his own experience. This work, the only one of the kind which has come down to us from ancient times, was composed between 16-14 B.C. and dedicated to Augustus. The first seven books treat of architecture proper (i, architecture in general; ii, building-materials; iii, temple-building; iv, orders of architecture; v, public buildings; vi, private buildings in town and in the country; vii, ornamentation of buildings); book viii, of water and waterways; ix, of the construction of water-clocks; x, of machines. Although the author is proud of his accomplishments, they do not include a capacity for giving his subject a scientific treatment. His method of expression is not seldom obscure and unintelligible; sometimes it is artificial and distorted; sometimes vulgar. An anonymous excerpt from the work is still preserved under the title De Diversis Fabricis Architectonicoe.
 
ABACUS 43.41%

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A square plate, especially the stone slab that covers the capital of a column (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF, figs. 1 and 5).
 
RHOECUS 34.88%

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A Greek artist of Samos, about 500 B.C., inventor of brass-founding, and architect of the celebrated temple of Hera in his native island [Herod., iii 60]. (See ARCHITECTURE and SCULPTURE.)
 
TRIGLYPHS 24.23%
A name given in the Doric frieze to surfaces which, projecting over every column and between every two columns, are ornamented with three parallel channels, two complete ones in the middle and two halves at the corners. Between the triglyphs are the metopes(q.v.). (Cp. ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF; and PARTHENON, fig. 2.)
 
THERMAE 22.43%

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The name given by the Romans to the public buildings, founded in and after the time of Agrippa, which combined, with warm baths, the arrangements of a Greek gymnasium. These included open and covered colonnades for conversation, instruction, and different exercises, especially the game of ball. The most extensive and splendid establishments of the sort were to be found in Rome, and are still to be seen, though, for the greater part, in ruins. Of the existing remains the most important are those of the Thermoe of Caracalla. (Cp. ARCHITECTURE, fig. 14, p. 56; and see BATHS.)
 
OLYMPIEUM 21.59%
 
CARYATIDES 18.35%
A technical term of Greek architecture. Caryatides were female statues clothed in long drapery, used instead of shafts, or columns, to support the entablature of a temple (see cut). The name properly means "maidens of Caryae (Karyai)," a Spartan town on the Arcadian frontier. Here it was the custom for bands of girls to perform their country dances at the yearly festivals of Artemis Karyatis. In doing so they sometimes assumed the attitude which suggested the form adopted by the artists in the statues mentioned above. (See also CANEPHORI.)
 
ROMA 13.58%

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The personification of the world-ruling city, first worshipped as a goddess by some cities of Asia Minor in the 2nd century B.C. She was represented under the image of a Tyche (q.v.), with the mural crown on her head and with all the attributes of prosperity and power. Under Augustus her cult in the Hellenic cities was united partly with that of Augustus, partly with that of the deified Caesar, Divus Iulius. In Rome she was always represented in military shape, sometimes like a Minerva, sometimes like an Amazon. On the obverse of silver coins she appears with a winged helmet (See cuts). Between the old Forum and the Colosseum Hadrian erected a handsome double temple in honour of Roma and of Venus, as ancestress of the Roman people. This was consecrated on April 21st, the day of the foundation of Rome and the festival of the Parilia. (See PALES.) It was afterwards called the templum urbis. The ruins still remain. For the site, See plan of the Roman Fora under FORUM; for a restoration of the interior, See ARCHITECTURE, fig. 13.
 
TOWER OF THE WINDS 13.17%
 
TRIUMPHAL ARCHES 12.95%

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A type of monumental architecture peculiar to the Romans. They were erected as memorials in honour of victorious generals, and (in later times) in honour of individual emperors. In architectural design they united the Roman arch with the Greek column. In Rome (not to mention the remains of the Arch of Drusus) there are still extant, (1) the arch which the Senate and people erected after the death of TITUS, in memory of the conquest of Judaea (70 A.D.). This consists of two massive piers of Pentelic marble inclosed by pilasters and joined together by a vaulted arch, and of a lofty entablature, on which the dedication is inscribed. On the inner jambs of the arch are two fine reliefs, representing (i) the emperor on the triumphal car, and (ii)a group of soldiers bearing the spoils of the Jewish War. (See TRIUMPH, fig 1.) (2) The Arch of SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, with three entrances. This is of remarkable dimensions, but the decoration, though far richer, is overcharged; it was erected by the people in 203 A.D. in honour of the emperor after his victories over the Parthians. (3) The Arch of CONSTANTINE, also with three entrances. This was built after 311 A.D. (see cut), by using certain portions (viz. the reliefs on both the fronts and on the inner sides of the middle arch) of one of the triumphal arches of Trajan, which was destroyed for this purpose. Among those not in Rome must be mentioned that at Orange in the south of France. Arches of honour were also erected for other services. Such are that of Augustus at Ariminum. (Rimini) on the occasion of the completion of the road leading to that place from Rome; that of Trajan at Ancona, on the restoration of the harbour. In Rome itself, between the site of the Velabrum and the Forum Boarium, there is a richly decorated, but coarsely sculptured, gateway with a flat lintel, bearing an inscription recording its erection (in A.D. 204) in honour of Septimius Severus and other members of the imperial house by the silversmiths or bankers (argentarii) and other merchants of the Forum Boarium. The arch of the Sergii at Pola in Istria is a family memorial.
 
PAUSANIAS 12.40%
The Greek traveller and geographer, a native of Lydia. He explored Greece, Macedonia, Asia, and Africa; and then, in the second half of the 2nd century A.D., settled in Rome, where he composed a Periegesis or Itinerary of Greece in ten books. Book i includes Attica and Megaris; ii, Corinth with Sicyon, Phlius, Argolis, Aegina, and the other neighbouring islands; iii, Laconia; iv, Messenia; v, vi, Elis and Olympia; vii, Achaea; viii, Arcadia; ix, Boeotia: x, Phocis and Locris. The work is founded on notes, taken on the spot, from his own observation and inquiry from the natives of the country, on the subject of the religious cults and the monuments of art and architecture. Together with these there are topographical and historical notices, in working up which Pausanias took into consideration the accounts of other authors, poets as well as prose writers. Although his account is not without numerous inaccuracies, omissions, and mistakes, it is yet of inestimable value for our knowledge of ancient Greece, especially with regard to its mythology and its religious cults, but above all for the history of Greek art. The composition of his work (especially in the earlier books) shows little skill in plan, execution, or style.
 
METOPES 11.84%

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[Metopoe, either " the intervening openings," or (Vitruv. iv 2, 4) " the spaces between the sockets " (Gr. opai). In Doric architecture the spaces between the triglyphs (q.v.) in the frieze. They were originally left open. Thus, Orestes manages to make his way into the Tauric temple of Artemis through one of these openings (Eur., Iph. T. 113). They were afterwards filled with panels of wood, which were in course of time superseded by plain slabs of marble, as in the temples at Paestum, etc. These slabs were sometimes slightly ornamented with around shield in low relief, as in the frieze of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. More frequently they were filled with figures in relief, as in those of Selinus (see SCULPTURE, fig. 1), and of the Theseum and the Parthenon (q.v.). The term is also applied to similarly sculptured slabs not placed between the triglyphs, but on the wall of the cella, as in the temple of Zeus at Olympia. See OLYMPIAN GAMES, fig. 3.]
 
THESAURUS 9.94%

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The Greek term for a room in which all kinds of objects, provisions, jewels, etc., were stored; hence a " treasury" or "treasure house." In ordinary life the underground store-chambers, circular vaulted rooms with an opening above, similar to our cellars, were thus named. The same name was given to treasure-houses which each State maintained within the precincts of Panhellenic sanctuaries, as repositories for their offerings to the gods. Such were those at Olympia and Delphi. The subterranean tombs, shaped like beehives, and of a construction dating from remote Greek antiquity, which have been found in various places, have been wrongly described as "treasure houses." The most celebrated of these are the so called thesaurus of Atreus at Mycenae (see ARCHITECTURE, fig. 3), and that of Minyas at Orchomenus (see TROPHONIUS). The latter is only partly, the former wholly preserved. The ground-plan of these structures is circular, and consists of one enclosed room with a domed roof, constructed of horizontal layers of massive stone blocks, projecting one over the other. This circular chamber was used probably for services in honour of the dead. The actual restiug-place of the body was a square room adjoining. The large room at Mycenae is fifty feet in diameter, and about the same in height. It consists of thirteen courses, the uppermost of which was only a single stone. It was decorated with hundreds of bronze plates, the holes for the nails being still visible.
 
ATLAS 9.04%
The son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene (or, according to anotlier account, Asia), brother of Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus. In Homer [Od. i. 52] he is called "the thinker of mischief," who knows the depths of the whole sea, and has under his care the pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder. In Hesiod [Theog. 517] he stands at the western end of the earth, near where the Hesperides dwell, holding the broad heaven on his head and unwearied hands. To this condition he is forced by Zeus, according to a later version as a punishment for the part which he took in the battle with the Titans. By the Ocean nymph Pleione he is father of the Pleiades, by Aethra of the Hyades. In Homer the nymph Calypso is also his daughter, who dwells on the island Ogygia, the navel of the sea. Later authors make him the father of the Hesperides, by Hesperis. It is to him that Amphitrite flies when pursued by Poseidon. As their knowledge of the West extended the Greeks transferred the abode of Atlas to the African mountain of the same name. Local stories of a mountain which supported the heaven would, no doubt, encourage the identification. In later times Atlas was represented as a wealthy king, and owner of the garden of the Hesperides. Perseus, with his head of Medusa, turned him into a rocky mountain for his inhospitality. In works of art he is represented as carrying the heaven; or (after the earth was discovered to be spherical), the terrestrial globe. Among the statues of Atlas the Farnese, in the Museum at Naples, is the best known. (See also OLYMPIC GAMES, fig. 3.) In Greek architecture, the term Atlantes was employed to denote the colossal male statues sometimes used in great buildings instead of columns to support an entablature or a projecting roof.
 
TROPHONIUS AND AGAMEDES 8.23%
 
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gutter splint
gutter splint
gutter splint